amazon rainforest

Finding peatlands

May 15, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Peatlands are a special kind of wetland that have enormous potential for helping to mitigate climate change. They are great at capturing carbon because their constantly soggy soils deprive decomposer organisms of the oxygen they need to break down dead plants. Living plants absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and incorporate the carbon into their tissues. When plants die, decomposers like bacteria digest the plant matter and release the carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere.

Researchers from the University of California Santa Cruz found that the average per-area carbon densities in peatlands in Colombia are four to ten times higher than those in the Amazon rainforest. This agrees with other studies around the world. On a global scale, peatlands cover only 3% of land areas but store more carbon than all the world’s trees. Peatlands are unsung heroes helping to reduce the impact of fossil fuel emissions.

Peatlands can only store carbon if they remain constantly wet. When they are drained for agriculture or other development, decomposer organisms get back to work digesting organic matter and releasing carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere.

A major challenge in protecting peatland is finding them. They are often hard to distinguish from other types of wetlands.

The Santa Cruz researchers have been identifying and locating peatlands in Colombia, where decades of civil war had made many parts of the country inaccessible for research. Finding and protecting peatlands there and in many other places around the world is an important task in the battle against climate change.

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Colombia’s peatlands could be a crucial tool to fight climate change. But first we have to find them.

Photo, posted January 2, 2018, courtesy of Roni Ziade / U.S. Forest Service via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Is the Amazon rainforest nearing a tipping point?

March 12, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The Amazon rainforest is the largest rainforest in the world, covering more than 2.5 million square miles. More than three million species live in the rainforest, which constitutes approximately 10% of the world’s known biodiversity. The Amazon rainforest’s biodiversity is so rich that scientists are still discovering new species all the time.

The Amazon rainforest absorbs huge amounts of carbon dioxide from Earth’s atmosphere, making it a key part of mitigating climate change. But the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by the Amazon rainforest today is 30% less than it was in the 1990s.

Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest remains a major problem. Cattle ranching is the leading cause of deforestation, but industrial activities, such as the mining of oil and gas, copper, iron, and gold, are also to blame.

According to a new study recently published in the journal Nature, global warming may be interacting with regional rainfall and deforestation to accelerate forest loss in the Amazon. In fact, it may be pushing the rainforest towards a partial or total collapse.

The study, which was led by researchers from Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil and the University of Birmingham in the U.K., has identified the potential thresholds of these stressors, and highlighted how their combined effects could produce a tipping point for the Amazon rainforest.

The findings are important because the Amazon rainforest plays a vital role in the global climate system. By identifying the most important stressors on the rainforest environment, the researchers hope they can develop a plan to keep the Amazon rainforest resilient.

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Is the Amazon forest approaching a tipping point?

Photo, posted July 2, 2017, courtesy of Anna & Michal via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Decreasing Forest Area Per Capita | Earth Wise

September 7, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Over the past 60 years, global forest area has decreased by 315,000 square miles, an area about twice the size of California. Combined with global population growth over that period, this has resulted in more than a 60% decline in global forest area per capita.

The continuous loss as well as degradation of forest affects the integrity of forest ecosystems and reduces their ability to generate and provide essential services and sustain biodiversity. It impacts the lives of at least 1.6 billion people worldwide – primarily in developing countries – who depend upon forests in multiple ways.

According to the new study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, forest losses have been occurring primarily in lower-income countries in the tropics while forest gains have occurred in higher-income countries in the mid-latitudes or extratropics.

More than half of the world’s forest losses were in Brazil, home to the Amazon rainforest. In the past 60 years, that country has had a net loss of 170,000 square miles of forest. While most high-income countries had net forest gains, Canada actually had a net loss of about 11,000 square miles of forest.

Economic growth has a stronger association with net forest gain than with net forest loss. Therefore, the study highlights the need to strengthen the support given to lower income countries, especially in the tropics, to help improve their capacity to minimize or curtail their forest losses. To help address this ongoing displacement of forest losses to lower income countries, higher-income nations need to reduce their dependence on imported tropic forest products.

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New study finds global forest area per capita has decreased by over 60%

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Deforestation In The Amazon Rainforest

December 19, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The Amazon rainforest is the biggest in the world. In fact, it’s larger than the next two rainforests combined. The Amazon rainforest covers more than three million square miles, roughly the size of the lower 48 states. It functions as a critical sink for carbon in the atmosphere, and is home to 10% of all known species in the world. The region’s biodiversity is so rich that scientists are still discovering new plant and animal species today.

Half A Degree

July 28, 2016 By WAMC WEB

The average global temperature is one degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels. There has long been a goal to limit global warming to no more than 2 degrees above those levels. But the Paris climate conference has set a more ambitious goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees. What difference would that half a degree make?

[Read more…] about Half A Degree